ABSTRACTThis article attempts to construct a distinct formulation of the sublime via an inspection of some of Jacques Derrida's principal works. Through a reading of his assessment of Kantian sublimity and a development of the dialectical from deconstruction, two patterns of the sublime can be formulated. These two constructed patterns of the sublime, which I shall name “sublime of différance” and “aporetic sublime,” are predicated on the notions of infinity and dialecticism. The aporetic sublime includes in its constitutive structure the (...) element of an orientation to an irreducible other. It is argued in the article that these constructions are open to an incorporation of the sublime as located beyond subjectivity and discourse. (shrink)

In his Science of Logic Hegel purports to give an account of a dialectical logic that generates the totality of being’s fundamental structures. This totality does not exhaust the richness of being, but it exhausts the basis of this richness. Any phenomenon, whether cognitive, scientific, social or political, is based upon some or all of those structures. The paper presents and examines the logic of a structure which pervades each and every phenomenon: the border(die Grenze). It is analyzed as an (...) advanced manifestation of “determinateness,” an even more primitive structure of being, which makes explicit its intrinsic connection with not-being. What is distinctive about Hegel’s analysis is that it establishes a logical character concerning the concept of “border” that precedes empirical observation and a connection with space. The aim of the paper is to reconstruct Hegel’s dialectic of the border in such a way as to make this logical character apparent and convincing to contemporary audience, who begin from the assumption that all discourse about border has an empirical basis and presupposes reference to space. It will be argued that, contrary to received opinion, the very phenomenon of “border” has certain universal and necessary features which explain its very possibility, are completely a priori and are established prior to any reference to space. A discussion about “borders” that excludes any a priori investigation into this phenomenon from its domain simply fails to illuminate its most important dimension: its logical core or, if you will, its universal and necessary attributes. (shrink)

In the 17th century, ‘reflexivity’ was coined as a new term for introspection and self-awareness. It thus was poised to serve the instrumental function of combating skepticism by asserting a knowing self. In this Cartesian paradigm, introspection ends in an entity of self-identity. An alternate interpretation recognized how an infinite regress of reflexivity would render ‘the self’ elusive, if not unknowable. Reflexivity in this latter mode was rediscovered by post-Kantian philosophers, most notably Hegel, who defined the self in its self-reflective (...) encounter with an other, and whose full articulation would occur at the final culmination of Reason's evolution. In the rising tide of 19th-century individualism, Emerson and Kierkegaard formulated constructions both in debt to, and in opposition against, Hegelian metaphysics. For each, although employing distinct strategies of self-consciousness, ‘the self’ reached its apogee through divine encounter. Characterized by personal responsibility and individual choice, their philosophies would later be subsumed by secular existentialists committed to defining moral individualism and asserting the possibilities for human freedom and selfauthentication. (shrink)

This thesis provides a detailed analysis of the dialectic of conscience within Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. It aims to show that Hegel provides a fundamental role for conscience within the state and, thus, that Hegel preserves the right to subjective freedom within ethical life. In doing so, it aims to unite divided opinion on the role of conscience within Hegel’s political philosophy and to further disarm the charge that Hegel’s state advocates repressive or authoritarian political structures. In order to pursue (...) this argument, this thesis first examines the emergence of conscience within the morality section of the text. It presents the moral conscience as the fruition of subjective freedom; as possessing the right to produce its own convictions and determine for itself what is good. However, it then continues to highlight the necessarily formal nature of the moral conscience and claims that, because of this formality, the content of conscience is always contingent. As such, the moral conscience is always in danger of willing evil; and it is precisely this danger that necessitates the move into ethics. The moral conscience is sublated by the true, ethical conscience. This thesis presents its own reading of the Aufhebung from the moral conscience to the true conscience of ethical life, which it believes properly reflects the dialectical progression of freedom within the text. It argues that, during the process of Aufhebung, the essential moments of moral conscience are retained and only the negative aspects are lost. In particular, it claims that conscience’s right to produce its own convictions is preserved within ethical life, but that the contingency of conscience is not. As such, true conscience wills the good both in and for itself. This does not mean that true conscience cannot make mistakes. But it does entail that true conscience cannot put its own convictions beyond criticism. For this reason, this thesis also maintains that the formal conscience of morality, in its non-aufgehoben form, has no place within the ethical realm. This thesis locates true conscience’s function in the disparity between the actual and the existing state. It argues that, in recognising the rational principles inherent in society and by transforming the existing world to conform more faithfully to these principles, true conscience plays an essential role in keeping the state in line with its own, rational essence. However, it also maintains that this type of immanent critique extends only to reform, and not to not radical, social criticism. The thesis concludes by describing true conscience’s role in the legislative power. (shrink)

The hermeneutic circle serves as a standard argument for all those who raise a claim to the autonomy of the human sciences. The proponents of an alternative methodology for the human sciences present the hermeneutic circle either as an ontological problem or as a specific methodological problem in the social sciences and the humanities. This paper checks the soundness of the argument by sketching out three variations of the problem and critically discussing them.

This article makes several conceptual proposals for a closer analysis of recognition more or less in line with Axel Honneth's account of recognition: (1) a proposal as to the genus of recognitional attitude and recognition, (2) a sketch of an analytical scheme intended to be heuristically useful for analysing the different species of recognitional attitude and recognition, (3) some proposals as to the precise contents of self-conceptions involved in each species and subspecies of recognition, and (4) suggestions as to the (...) relation of the species of recognitional attitude to social settings and concrete personal relationships as well as to the totalities of attitudes instantiated in these settings and relationships. A guiding idea is that the somewhat mechanistic Meadian vocabulary of 'urges' and 'internalizations' of Honneth's original formulations should be replaced with formulations where recognition is consistently conceptualized as consisting of attitudes with propositional or judgmental content. (shrink)

The famous Marxian ‘transformation problem’ originated from a research manuscript written by Marx in 1864/65, from which Engels assembledCapitaliii. Unequal capital compositions, equal rates of surplus-value and equal rates of profit among different sectors are posited, and reconciled using the problematic concept of ‘prices of production’. Yet the assumption of equal rates of surplus-value is at odds with the subsequent text ofCapitali, where Marx presents various determinants of the rate of surplus-value, and connects productive powers of labour diverging between sectors (...) with divergentvalue-generating potenciesof labour. Given the other determinants, diverging rates of surplus-value then result. Marx disregarded these productive power differentials when he originally formulated his transformation. In a reconstruction, building onCapitali, this omission is rectified. It makes prices of production and hence the dual account systems redundant. The transformation problem then evaporates. (shrink)

Following thinkers of the archive such as Derrida, Foucault and Groys, among others, one of the ethical functions of the archive is to enable differentiation: to do archival work is to unlock difference. Yet how is one to deem the archival content outside of those moments in which we deliberately engage with it? More specifically, how is one to think the spectatorial relation to images that, assigned to the sequestered space of the archive, remain most of the time without spectators? (...) In approaching the archival mode through the philosophical lens of sublation and its Hegelian precursor of Aufhebung that performs alteration through preservation-as-cancellation, this essay sets out to articulate a phenomenology of the archived photograph as an image of, or in, sublation. Exploring the fragile dynamics at stake between the archived and its non-archived outside, emphasis is laid on the critical contradictions inherent in the logics of archivization: seeking to preserve its documents, the archive cannot do so without also provoking further differentiation. (shrink)

This article attempts to show, first, that for Hegel the role of property is to enable persons both to objectify their freedom and to properly express their recognition of each other as free, and second, that the Marx of 1844 uses fundamentally similar ideas in his exposition of communist society. For him the role of ‘true property’ is to enable individuals both to objectify their essential human powers and their individuality, and to express their recognition of each other as fellow (...) human beings with needs, or their ‘human recognition’. Marx further uses these ideas to condemn the society of private property and market exchange as characterised by ‘estranged’ forms of property and recognition. He therefore uses a structure of ideas which Hegel had used to justify the institutions of private property and market exchange, in order to condemn those same institutions. (shrink)

If mysticism, as Coventry Patmore defines it, is 'the science of ultimates,' in what way would mysticism explain the possibility of a profound relationship between ultimate reality as infinite and proximate reality as finite ? This paper attempts to address that question through the lens of Evelyn Underhill’s philosophy of mysticism. The paper fundamentally works at framing two of Hegel’s triadic patterns of dialectic against the being-becoming binary as engaged by Underhill. This application helps unveil the relation of transcendence with (...) immanence, a relation that is crucial for a structuring of the infinite-finite mystical intimacy. (shrink)

This paper explores the implications of the recent revival of Hegel studies for the philosophy of economics. We argue that Hegel’s theory of Objective Spirit anticipates many elements of modern approaches in cognitive sciences and of the philosophy of mind, which adopt an externalist framework. In particular, Hegel pre-empts the theories of social and distributed cognition. The pivotal elements of Hegelian social ontology are the continuity thesis, the performativity thesis, and the recognition thesis, which, when taken together, imply that all (...) mental processes are essentially dependent on externalizations, with the underlying pattern of actions being performative. In turn, performative action is impossible without mutual recognition in an intersubjective domain. We demonstrate the implications for economic theory in sketching an externalist approach to institutions and preferences. (shrink)

This paper constitutes a critical exploration of the functional features underpinning the unconscious of institutional attachment—namely an attachment which is understood in terms of the subject-infant’s love for his institutional parent-power holder, and the indefinite need for a subject to remain within its infantile condition under the parenthood of the State. We venture beyond the Paternal metaphor and move towards the neglected metaphor of the Mother, so focal in the individual process of identification, assumption of language and the permanent attachment (...) to the space of prohibition and Law. A new position in Language is defined. To understand how the psychic space of the infant is artfully subjugated in the making of the Western culture and domination of the Western system of legal interpretation, an enquiry into the legal emblematic history of representations is necessary to map the process through which the subject learns its legal self and relationship with otherness through what Pierre Legendre coined as the Occidental Mirror and the triangular logic of reflexivity. A final enquiry interrogates the way the legal institution places itself in the position of the specular image that captivates the subject-infant within a procreated legal order, a law-giving and law abiding life starting from the laws of the familial structure reinforced by the role of the parents and by analogy, by the State assuming that role in the institutional life of the ad infinitum infant. (shrink)

This paper offers a critical response to Fredrik Svenaeus’ use of the Heideggerian uncanny to analyse the experience of illness. It is argued that the uncanny is part of a culture of concepts through which the condition of modernity has been analysed by philosophers, social theorists, writers and artists. All centre upon the idea of alienation, and thus not being at home in the society that should be one’s home. This association will be exploited to offer a reinterpretation of Svenaeus’ (...) thesis as a sociological and political, rather than an ontological, one. By reviewing the work of Hegelian philosophers, Georg Simmel, and novelists, represented by Mann, Camus and McCullers, it will be argued that illness is bound up with social alienation, both as something that is caused by conditions of alienation and as an interpretative response to alienation. Seeing illness as a metaphor of the human condition in modernity allows the medical humanities to inform therapy, that would allow the patient to understand their illness, not as the ontological condition of Dasein, but rather as something mediated by modern social, economic and political conditions. (shrink)